Connectivity

Fibre Broadband is becoming increasingly popular these days, but many people still aren’t sure what it is or what the benefits are over a standard broadband connection.

Delivering standard broadband over copper phone lines has a significant impact the further away you live from your local telephone exchange.  If your exchange is particularly far away then you may suffer from slow speeds.  Some people may get less than 2mb/sec if they live more than 4km away from their local telephone exchange and possibly little to no service at all if they live further than 5km from the exchange. 

With fibre broadband however, instead of using copper wire, which uses electrical impulses to transmit data, a fibre optic cable carries light impulses which travel down the inside of a very thin glass fibre tube.  This means not only do speeds not decline with distance from the exchange, but it is capable of delivering broadband speeds far higher than standard broadband.

This means that you get a fast connection even when multiple people are online and they can all download and surf with little to no drop in speed.  Watching video is also much more
reliable with much less buffering to cope with.

In the UK, this service is not available everywhere, but should now be available in many areas with high population density such as cities and towns. Contact us to find out if you could be experiencing a super-fast connection.

If you feel your internet just isn’t performing at the speed it should, or the speed you would like, there are a few things you can do to help:

Keep secure – Make sure that your wireless network is password protected.  You don’t want your neighbours sneakily connecting to yours and slowing you down!

Reduce sharing – Do your children watch video’s on your iPad…? Do you have smartphones or laptops connected to your wi-fi…? All of these gadgets are stealers of your speed.  Make sure you disconnect devices from your wi-fi when you are not using them.  

Work smarter – Software such as file-sharing & security updates use your broadband connection too, as they run in the background. Whilst they shouldn’t be ignored, try changing your settings to ask for permission before programmes start and you can make sure they run at times when is convenient for you!

Find your perfect place – You will get the best out of your router, when you position it well.  The closer your devices are to it, the better the connection will be.  Any walls, floors, large objects between your devices and the router will reduce the strength of the signal. So whenever possible try to remain in direct line of sight.

Keep it current – Technology gets updated constantly, so where possible try to make sure that you keep up-to-date.  Update your operating system regularly, ensure you are using the most recent version of web-browser and don’t keep the same router for ever and ever!

Where the internet is concerned, the rabbit wins.  Our maximum speeds can vary depending on availability at your local exchange but we will always endeavour to provide you with the fastest connection in your area. If you want to discuss any of our products/services or broadband solutions you can contact us here.